


Wake Up

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [12]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6796480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, <i>I don’t wanna be wasted / I don’t wanna live inside this daydream anymore / I just wanna be happy again</i>."</p><p>JD lives in a daydream where every blond kid in the hallway at school is Charlie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Up

JD knew it was a big deal, that the school let him be in charge of the occasional student activity. Given that they didn’t know he was, for all intents and purposes, a real adult who had experience commanding the lives of dozens, if not hundreds of men, had literally been responsible for their lives, Principal Connor’s initial wariness at letting JD be in charge of anything involving large groups of students was understandable. Sometimes JD itched at the face in the mirror, at the child he saw there, not the least of which was because Evan was skittish around him. JD had tried to flirt with him (he was, admittedly, rusty at flirting in general, and thoroughly inexperienced at flirting with another man). He’d strutted around the house shirtless (okay, there were some advantages to this newer, younger body), showed off some of his engineering skills, even whipped out some of his best cooking skills, but Evan just smiled politely at him and didn’t look at all inclined to make out with JD as a token of his awe or appreciation.

Now was not the time to be thinking about making out with Evan, though. Hordes of teenagers were about to descend on the house for the monthly Astronomy Bash. It was the last one before the holidays - Thanksgiving was in a couple of weeks, and a month after that was Christmas, and everyone had so much going on that this was it. The last Astronomy Bash of the year. Kids were under no obligation to come, and there were really only four regular attendees - Tyler, Tina, Sasha, and Damien - but the numbers were pretty steady every time. Twenty kids. Four adults (five, though Rodney tended to avoid the students as a matter of course), and one cat. What could go wrong?

Tyler and Tina weren’t dating, best as anyone on staff could tell (and the staff kept track of these things, because domestic violence wasn’t limited to adults, and a lot of these kids had grown up watching those patterns of interpersonal relationships), but they were pretty much attached at the hip, and they’d showed up first. Tina and Sasha actually had huge crushes on Cam (as evidenced by their food-poisoning him last week), so they showed up to pretty much everything. JD knew plenty of students had crushes on John and Evan, too. JD wasn’t stupid; he knew kids at school had crushes on him, but that was not an option, never an option, not even if they approached him after graduation, which one or two had. One thing JD wasn’t rusty at was letting people down gently.

JD had instructed Cam to set the four early party guests to work while he, Evan, and John, organized the rest of the party. Evan was in charge of the snacks (they’d ordered some cheap pizzas but always supplemented with healthy snacks, because Evan had been raised by hippies), John was organizing the quiz materials, and JD was responsible for making sure the telescope was dialed in (they always looked at the current Zodiac constellation and then one other, for educational purposes).

He popped into the kitchen to ask Evan a question, only Evan was nowhere in sight.

And then he heard Tyler say, “Hey, cool, is that your service gun?”

JD whipped around and saw Tyler reach out, go to scoop up an M9.

“No!”

Tyler froze.

JD was across the kitchen in an instant, knocking his hand away from the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Easy, it’s unloaded,” Cam said.

JD turned. Cam was sitting at the kitchen table with his cleaning kit out. The M9, JD realized, was partially disassembled.

“He can’t hurt himself with it,” Cam continued, eyeing JD warily.

But JD’s heart was roaring in his ears and his pulse was stuttering.

Cam caught Tyler’s eye. “Different people have different feelings about guns. My daddy was in the Air Force like me, and a whole bunch of my relatives have served, too, so I grew up around guns. Always respect them, because they’re designed for one thing - killing - but if you know how to use one, how to be safe with one, there’s no need to be afraid of them.”

Tyler had shrunk back, was looking at JD with wide eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean -”

“It’s all right,” Cam said. “Let me talk to JD, all right?” He reassembled the M9 quickly and efficiently - Tyler’s eyes were wide with awe - and locked it back in its case, tucked the key into his pocket. “Don’t touch anything,” Cam added, addressing Tyler.

“I won’t, Mr. Mitchell,” Tyler said in a small voice. Usually he called Cam ‘Cammie’ when they weren’t in class.

Cam beckoned at JD, then wheeled himself out of the kitchen and down the hall - to JD’s room. So JD was on safe ground.

“Want to tell me what the hell happened back there?” Cam asked. “You scared that kid half to death.”

JD was struggling to breathe. His head was swimming. This was the hardest part about going back to school, about being a student, about being around students, looking at their faces and knowing Charlie should have been their age, should have been doing the things they were doing, driving cars and getting jobs and going to prom. When he’d tried to be one of them, he’d been hyperaware of the fact that he wasn’t, because he’d killed one of them. He could kill all of them. At school, Cam was in charge of the classroom; JD was just there to help. And here, at the house, the other three were always there to help, were supposed to be on a buddy system so no one was left alone with a kid ever. There was a reason JD wasn’t supposed to be alone around the kids. He couldn’t be trusted with them. He couldn’t keep them safe. First Charlie and then Skaara and then Cassie and -

“JD?” Cam prodded, brow furrowed in concern. “Hey, talk to me. What’s going on?”

JD hadn’t told anyone. Daniel knew, because the first trip through the Stargate hadn’t been quite a year after Charlie’s death, and there had still been talk around the Mountain about it. Sam and Teal’c knew - something, because they’d been to the hospital after that crystal-based entity took first his, then Charlie’s form. But no one really knew about the horror and the guilt that flooded JD every time he saw a boy with just the right shape to his eyes or the right shade of dark-blond hair or had the same laugh or threw a baseball the just like Charlie had.

The thing about being young again was JD had all of his memories, but they were made fuzzy by distance and time (brought sharply back into focus with introduction of Rodney McKay into their messed-up little family) and made fiercer, brighter by teenage hormones. The truth was, teenagers felt everything more strongly. They were less good at regulating their emotions, so when feelings hit, they hit full force.

JD collapsed to the floor, sobbing. He had to stop, couldn’t cry, not in front of one of his men, but he saw Tyler reaching for the gun, heard that fatal gunshot, felt that awful silence when he tore into the house and called Charlie’s name. He remembered Charlie’s curiousness about his service pistol, remembered him brushing Charlie off; he was only eight years old, he was too young.

“JD. Hey.” Cam reached out, tugged on JD’s shoulder.

JD pushed himself up with shaking hands, but his whole body was wracked with sobs. Cam tugged at him again, pulled JD onto his lap, wrapped his arms around him and held him, rocking him. JD buried his face against Cam’s throat, struggling to breathe.

“Hey,” Evan said, “where’s the cash for the pizza - whoa. What’s going on here?”

JD jerked back from Cam, swiped desperately at his damp face.

But Evan knelt down beside Cam’s chair, smoothed a hand up JD’s back like he did for everyone he tried to comfort. “Are you all right? What happened?”

JD tried to take a deep breath, but it caught in his chest, wrenched out of him in another sob. He despised crying. He had to stop. This was pathetic. It was -

“Cammie? There’s a pizza guy here.” It was Tyler again.

JD turned away from the doorway, biting back further sobs.

“Go find John or Rodney, okay?” Cam said, as politely as possible.

“Is everything okay?”

“Go, Tyler,” Evan said firmly. “We’ve got this.”

As soon as Tyler’s footsteps had faded, JD tried to stand, but Cam kept an arm anchored around his waist. “JD, what was that back there? You scared the hell out of Tyler, and you’re scaring us too.”

“What happened with Tyler?” Evan asked quietly.

“He wanted to look at my M9 while I was cleaning it. He went to pick it up and JD freaked out at him.”

Evan shrugged. “My mother’s still terrified of guns and hates that I own one. She makes me leave it at the door whenever I come to visit.”

“I grew up in the country, and also in a military family. My parents’ opinion about them is pretty different,” Cam said.

Evan rubbed JD’s back some more. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“You know you probably should.” Cam tried to catch JD’s eye, but JD avoided his gaze, stared down at his hands. Evan’s hand on his back was really nice.

“I know.”

“Do you want me to send the kids home?” Evan asked.

JD shook his head. “No. I’ll be fine. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“You’re not fine,” Evan said. “And you shouldn’t pretend to be. You’re entitled to your feelings.”

“Learn that in therapy, did you?” JD winced as soon as he said it.

Cam squeezed his wrist in warning. Low blow.

“I did,” Evan said calmly, unfazed, and JD really, really wanted to know what it would take, to shatter Evan’s unflappable calm (and JD knew what it took, a lizard mask and the wrong moment, but when it came to other people’s feelings and emotions, Evan was solid as bedrock, and JD just wanted to _shake him_ ).

So he said, “I had a son, once.”

Evan reared back in shock. “A son?”

“Before. In my old life. I didn’t come from a military family. Neither did Sara. She was a nurse. She wasn’t very comfortable with the soldier part of me, so I always made sure to leave the uniform on base, lock up my weapons when I came home. But Charlie was like any other boy. He was curious. He wanted to see my gun. I said no. And one day I failed to lock it up, so he satisfied his curiosity himself. And now I don’t have a son anymore.”

The silence that fell between the three of them was the same silence that had greeted JD when he’d opened the front door and called Charlie’s name. He started to slide off of Cam’s lap, and Cam let him go. But then Cam reached out, caught his wrist again and held him, said,

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Don’t be stupid. I failed to lock it up. I failed to teach him gun safety. I failed to take the necessary steps to keep him safe, and now he’s dead.”

Evan sighed. “So when Tyler reached for the gun -”

JD swallowed hard. “Flashback.”

Evan pulled him into a crushing hug, and it was too much, JD started crying again, and then Evan was crying, and Cam was crying too.

When it was over, JD was drained and exhausted, and the back of his shirt was damp from Cam’s tears, and the front of his shirt was damp from Evan’s tears, and they all looked terrible, but JD loved them both fiercely.  
  
Maybe, finally, the daydream he’d been living in, the one where every blond kid in the hallway was Charlie, was finally over. He could wake up.


End file.
